As objects of popular culture, topographic picture postcards were long viewed as ‘unworthy’ of scholarly evaluation. Nevertheless, these seemingly apolitical picture postcards were involved in processes of identity-building and can therefore be a valuable source of information on identity formation and (self-) identification. They play a significant role in shaping perceptions and interpretations of reality. By depicting images of places, regions or tourist attractions, they express ideologies of place, offer insights in everyday historical practices, and can portray different individual identities. The decades leading up to WWI were the golden era of postcards when they became a popular form of mass media. At the same time, Lower Styria (the former Untersteiermark, today’s Štajerska), a region strongly shaped by bilingualism, was characterized by intensified national conflicts. These conflicts were mostly constructed around demands of language policy and language rights: language was no longer simply a means of communication, but became an emblem of one’s national affiliation and identity. Therefore, topographic postcards, on which visual and linguistic representations always intersect, served as a “stage” on which “national” claims to a specific territory could be presented. However, postcards can not only provide evidence of an intensifying linguistic and ethnic polarization, but they can also portray bilingualism, national indifference and pragmatic flexibility, thereby showing that the region was not characterized by hermetically sealed ethno-linguistic groups who were at odds with each other. In fact, identities in Lower Styria were chiefly determined not by one’s ‘nationality,’ but in terms of one’s local, regional, or social affiliations, one’s religious or political beliefs and cultural preferences. Individuals as well as collective groups are in many respects hybrids of identity. Therefore, the picture postcard as a medium close to everyday life in the semi-public sphere – used by the masses and mainly apolitical – seems to be just the right material to tackle such questions of identifications and multiple identities in Lower Styria within the set time frame.